As fans eagerly await the arrival of cross-play in Apex Legends, which was first announced in June, data miners have been busy finding out as much as they can from the game’s code, revealing more information about how it will work.
Cross-platform play, allowing players on console, PC, and Nintendo Switch, to all play with and against each other, is a feature that Respawn Entertainment said early on was “important” for Apex Legends.
However, the game was not originally developed with cross-play functionality, meaning it required lots of post-launch dev time to ensure it would run smoothly and provide what players expect.
Reliable data miner Shrugtal has compiled all of his findings from the game’s code relating to cross-play, to provide a clearer picture of what’s in-store when it finally becomes available.
How will cross-play work in Apex Legends?
Some very basic code relates to cross-play chatrooms, and other social features. There is also an explanation of how cross-play will work using EADP (Electronic Arts Digital Platform), which will allow players on all platforms to send friend requests for example, rather than using the specific platform’s own system.
With this, there will also be a new UI system, replacing the current platform-specific UI, for friend requests, game invites and more, and will be “far more substantial” than the current social tab in Apex Legends.
As we covered previously, there is also some code that suggests testing has taken place for cross-progression, but this isn’t confirmed yet.
Clubs feature in Apex Legends
Clubs is a feature that was previously leaked and then shown, possibly by mistake, in the Season 6 devstream. It’s unclear still exactly what the feature will do, but is expected to help with matchmaking when cross-play arrives. In the latest patch, Shrugtal says that Clubs were updated to support cross-play specifically.
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Collection event & Cross-play release?
Perhaps the most anticipated detail is the actual release date of all these features. Shrugtal, as with other data miners, expect a new collection event to start on September 15, and this could line up with the launch of cross-play too.
Although it’s possible that cross-play would be delayed until Season 7, the devs may want to avoid this as it would cause an overload of new content, and thus new bugs, all at once. It’s reasonable to expect that they would want cross-play implemented and out of the way before launching a new season.
- Read More: When is Apex Legends coming to Steam?
Content creators and community members have also predicted a September 15 release for cross-play, again lining up with the start of the collection event.
Can we all take a moment to acknowledge that we get Apex Legends crossplay next month 👀
— staycation (@staycationtg) August 27, 2020
https://twitter.com/tHeNeOn_BeAst/status/1299105581488386050
As always, it must be stressed that this information is based on data mining, and things can always change during development.
